The dust from the road trailed my car like a long plume of smoke. The tires jiggled over gravel as my phone announced my arrival at my destination with a soft chime. I slowed and turned into a wide lot of patchy grass fenced by irregular trees and shrubs. At the center was a silver-sided trailer home surrounded by a wooden-slat fence. All manner of wards hung from it: dreamcatchers, old Dutch barn hexes, ankhs, crystals, horseshoes, bunches of dried wildflowers, rabbits’ feet, and crosses made from alderwood twigs bundled with twine, along with the odd wind chime or spinning windmill.
The fence leaned in spots as it traced a rough oval shape around the trailer at the center, leaving a small yard on all sides. The slats looked like remaindered pallet wood and were bound by wraps of wire. Only a few were large enough to be driven into the ground. All in all, it wouldn’t have stopped a child from pushing in, let alone a thief. But then, that’s what the dogs were for—a dozen or so I guessed, judging from the noise. They had gathered at the fence gate and barked and howled over each other as I got out of the car. There was a whole mess of them, all slobber and wags.
“Alright, alright!”
A middle-aged woman, skinny and tired, appeared in the open door to yell at the pack. The trailer home opened onto a tiny deck, barely big enough for the old round-topped grill that sat there, but it was a good four feet off the ground, meaning the woman could see me over the fence clear as day. Hanging from the sides of the trailer were the same menagerie of wards as on the fence, including a few dusty mirrors.
I raised a hand in greeting. It was all I could do over the noise. The woman eyed me from the porch as the dogs quieted down.
“You the woman from New York?” she called.
I nodded. I recognized her. She hadn’t aged particularly well. She was skinnier than I remember, and her sandy hair needed a good wash, as did the gray sweat pants she wore. But then, with that many dogs, I’m sure laundry was a never-ending chore.
“It’s not locked.” She nodded to the metal gate that held the pack at bay. “But you might wanna be careful of Vera.” She nodded again toward the back of the yard.
Standing there was without a doubt the largest dog I’ve ever seen—long-haired and furry with a full white-and-gray coat and very alert eyes. Her tail was up and not wagging, but her posture wasn’t threatening as much as curious, like she wasn’t sure what to make of me yet. I slipped through the gate sideways so as to not let any of the occupants out and greeted as many of them as I could. They pushed against me as they moved about, tails slapping my legs. My boots were covered in dirty paw prints and I got hair all over my slacks. But Vera didn’t move. She kept her alert, watchful pose.
The thing about big dogs is that you can’t be afraid, and you can’t inspire fear either. After walking a few steps toward her, I knelt to her height and let her come the rest of the way. If she wanted. I held up my hand for her to sniff. Some people forget that vision isn’t a dog’s primary sense like it is for us.
Vera sniffed me. And that was it. She walked back, turned three times, and plopped back down on the dirt with a grunt and yawned.
I stood.
“Huh. I’ve never seen that before,” her owner said from the door.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Some asshole up north thought it would be cool to cross a captive wolf with a giant Alaskan malamute. Then he was surprised when she turned out to be a predator and not a 180-pound lapdog.”
“A hundred and eighty pounds?” I asked. I looked down at my silent friend. If she went up on her hind legs, she would’ve been a head taller than me.
“Vera doesn’t take to anyone.”
“Well, I’ve always been good with animals. Dogs especially.”
“I guess so. Why don’t you come on up?”
I walked up the stairs and through the squeaky screen door. The interior reeked of stale cigarette smoke. There was a small TV on the counter near the sink. It was turned on but the sound was low. There was a shallow fridge next to me and a closet-sized bathroom just past the pantry. There were a few articles of clothing on the floor, and more than a couple mirrors hanging about. But other than that, it was tidy. I saw several ash trays but no alcohol. Whatever else she was, Bea Goswick didn’t seem to be much of a drinker. Which was too bad. I could’ve used one.
“Any trouble finding the place?” she asked. “Phone apps have been known to send people to the other side of the county.”
“Nope,” I said, standing in front of the door. “Brought me right here.”
She looked me over.
“That’s a lot of dogs,” I said.
“Yeah.” She let out a single laugh.
“Strays?”
“Sort of. I work at a shelter.”
“Ah. Rescues then.”
She nodded. “Most of them. You know how it goes. It was either come here or be put down. I guess that makes me your stereotypical bleeding heart.”
“Must be a lot of work, that many animals. Expensive, too.”
“It’s worth it. They keep an eye on things. Keep me safe. Nothing gets by that many ears and noses.”
“I can see that. I bet they could wake the dead when they all get going.”
“Don’t have to wake them. They just have to scare them away. What can I do for you, Detective?”
“I don’t know if you remember me. I was—”
“I remember.”
She sat down on the cushioned bench that ran around the kitchen table, attached by post to the floor. She slid to the back and picked up her lit joint from the aluminum ash tray.
I stood by the door. “I received a package recently. Ostensibly mailed from your old address in Floral Park.”
“Is that so? From my unit?”
“From the Sacchis’.”
I watched Bea closely as I spoke. Her reaction was about what I expected—a little bit surprised but not so much as to suggest she ever believed the girl was actually dead.
“I see. Have you found her? Or is that classified or whatever?” She tapped the ash off the end.
“The NYPD doesn’t handle state secrets.”
“Yeah, but you guys have rules and stuff. Legal things you have to worry about.”
“We haven’t found her, no. But I’d like to.”
“Oh?” She snuffed her joint in the ash tray as if just remembering I was a cop. Not that I could’ve arrested her in Ohio. “Why’s that? She’d have to be, what now? 22? 23? If she made it this long, then she’s able to take care of herself, don’t ya think?”
I nodded. “But she still has a mental handicap.”
“Not that it made a difference,” Bea objected. “Not where I could tell.”
“You really think she’s been looking after herself this whole time?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. Can’t say I care, to be honest.”
That surprised me. “Why’s that?”
She shrugged. That was it.
“Does the name Amber Massey mean anything to you?”
She shook her head.
“What about Palmer Bell?” I asked. “Keep in touch with her?”
She sat back and studied me, like she wasn’t sure what I was after and how she fit into it. She shook her head. She was silent in a way that made it clear nothing else was forthcoming.
“You’re not worried about her either?” I asked.
“Not anymore.”
“Why do you say that?”
She took a deep breath and sighed. “Because if you guys can’t find her, then she’s probably dead.”
“Her and not Alexa? How can you be sure?”
“I didn’t say I was sure. I said probably. I said back then you guys had it wrong. You and that other guy. What was his name?”
“Detective Hammond.”
“Yeah. I told you, but it was clear you both had made up your mind from the start.” She shook her head at the table. She was jittery. Her fingers moved up and down rapidly. “Dom loved Palmer. He called her Pixie. She kinda looked like one, all of five-foot-two and those ears sticking out.”
“When I talked to you before,” I said, “you’d mentioned she’d warned you to mind your own business. To stay away from her family.”
“She warned me to stay away from Alexa. But I told you then, she wasn’t threatening me. I knew you didn’t believe me. I knew it then. I told her as much before the trial.”
“If it wasn’t a threat, then why warn you away?”
“To protect me.”
“Protect you? From who?”
“Look. It was a long time ago. And it was never any of my business to begin with. I ain’t got no food, so unless you wanna come with me to the store . . .”
“You were there, Ms. Goswick, which makes you a witness.”
“Bea,” she corrected me.
“You’re a witness,” I repeated, “whether you want to be or not. You. Not me. A young woman is missing. Your friend was tried for it.”
“Who’s fault is that?”
“You don’t wanna talk to me,” I said, “that’s fine. That’s your right. But then don’t turn around and blame us for getting things wrong. We weren’t there.”
“Something wasn’t right with Alexa!” she yelled out of the blue. It was a horrible overreaction, like it had been building for a long time. “Alright? Is that what you want me to say? That girl was just wrong. And Pixie knew it.”
“What do you mean wrong?”
“It’s like—” She struggled for the words. “I dunno. The faces she’d have or whatever—when you’d walk in or glance over to her when she thought no one was paying attention. They weren’t faces a child would make.”
“What kind of faces? Rage? Flirtation? Jealousy?”
She was shaking her head as I spoke. “No, no, nothing like that. I can’t describe it. Faces you’d expect someone older to have, not a 15-year-old girl with a disability. Serious faces. And if she caught you looking, she’d just go blank, like . . .”
“Like?”
She shook her head. “Like there was someone in there with her, in her body. In her mind, maybe. I know how it sounds,” she added quickly. “And I know how my house looks. I know what people think of me.”
“If that’s true, wouldn’t that make Alexa the real victim?”
Bea got very quiet. “The truth? Fine. It was seven years ago. It doesn’t matter anymore and I don’t care what people think anymore. Alexa Sacchi is the reason I moved out here. Okay? She’s the reason I quit the city and don’t stay out late. Does wonders for your social life, lemme tell you. You think many men hang around when they see this place? I know how it looks. Like I’m a crazy person. I go to work. I lock up. I come home. I toss salt over my shoulder and look at everyone’s reflection in the—” She stopped.
I looked up at a little cracked mirror hanging on an angle above the door frame. I hadn’t noticed it before. I was pleased to see I looked exactly as I expected. Nothing hitching a ride.
Bea was half a world away then. Her gaze passed through the wall in front of her as her leg shook under the table. “There was one time, before everything got really bad, when I went over there.”
“To the Sacchis’?” I asked.
She nodded. “Alexa was looking at me. In the mirror. She was just staring. In the reflection, her eyes weren’t blinking. And her mouth was closed. She just looked at me. But the thing is . . . I could hear her voice. Understand? I could hear her talking to Dom. I could see his reflection talking back, having a normal conversation. But . . . Not her.” Bea turned her eyes to me finally, wet and wide. “I know what I saw. I didn’t imagine it. Whatever her body was doing, Alexa’s reflection was staring right at me. Just, staring. Like she wanted to burn a hole in me with her eyes. And then—”
She shook her head.
“Then?” I asked.
“I saw someone else’s face.”
We were quiet a minute.
“I had a lab,” she said. “You remember that? A black retriever.”
I nodded.
“Smartest dog ever,” she said. She sniffed. “My best friend. I got her after I got out of the army. They use dogs. Did you know that?”
“Was that your job?” I asked. “K-9 detail?”
She nodded. “I love animals. I loved Betsy. I trained her. We went out off-leash in the city. Got fined for it a couple times, but I didn’t care. She was a good dog. She didn’t jump on people. She didn’t chase. Squirrels would run right past her and her ears would perk up and she’d reeeeally want to”—she laughed through forming tears—”but she’d look to me first to see if it was okay.”
She coughed once and sniffed again and rubbed her nose. I waited.
“She ran out that day . . . Dogs have expressions, did you know that? And they can read our faces. They’re the only animal that can. She bolted that day and I can tell you, it wasn’t from fear. She was chasing something. Doing her job. And whatever it was led her right in front of that car. She was so fixed on chasing away the danger, protecting me, that she didn’t notice it coming until it was too late.”
Her eyes were wet now.
“That night, I heard a voice. Lying in bed. I couldn’t make out the words. It was like someone was inside the wall talking to themselves. I couldn’t hear the words. Except for two. They rose up from the others. ‘Get out,’ they said. ‘Get out.’
“I don’t care if you think I’m crazy. I’ve made my peace with the whole thing, and I’ve come to accept that it’s just something people get or not. I know what I heard. Something like that, it changes you.” She tapped her gut. “In here. I started getting obsessed.”
“Obsessed?”
“With the unexplained. Ghosts and ESP and all that crap that everybody wants to believe is real, but only because they’ve never experienced it. When you do . . . And I got obsessed with Alexa. She was a medium. Did you know that?”
I nodded.
“I didn’t. I didn’t even know what that was. I just thought what everyone thought, that she was ‘special,’ that she’d just invented all these imaginary friends she talked to. They were so specific, though. She had this woman she talked to, Mrs. Wells. Dom mentioned it once. We used to talk about Alexa a lot. Everyone did. She was that special, ya know? Dom said Mrs. Wells had two wooden fingers.” She held up her left pinky and ring finger. “He said Alexa told him Mrs. Wells had lost them to a weaving machine. What kind of kid makes up a detail like that?
“I saw her. Maybe two years back. In the newspaper.”
“Alexa?”
“Her picture. She was with a group of special needs kids. At a school in Spanish Harlem. I was looking into reports of paranormal activity there, and there she was. I couldn’t believe it. So I started digging.” Her face grew dim. “Eventually, I saw what he was doing, what was happening, and—” She stopped.
“He?”
She looked at me very seriously. “He doesn’t have a name. Not a proper one. Not that anybody knows. But he has lots of aliases. Here. I’ll show you.”
She led me out of the house and back through the pack to a shed on the other side of the dirt lot. She unlocked it and dug in junk for several minutes before dragging a cardboard file box from the corner. It had brown water stains on the sides. There was a file on top. Underneath it were old books. One side of the file was charred from where she’d started to burn it and then changed her mind.
“I just couldn’t,” she said, as if apologizing to herself. “Burning it all felt like giving in. He’s already won. I know that. But hiding the truth made me feel like I was helping somehow. Collaborating. But I’m a coward. I didn’t want to end up like the rest of them. So I moved out here. To the middle of nowhere. I got my dogs so nothing can sneak up on me.” She looked at the file. “But I’m glad I didn’t burn it. This is better.” She handed it to me.
“What is this?”
“Just take it,” she said. “Please. I’m in a good place, now—as good as I can be. I want to put all of it behind me. Just take it. And don’t ever call me again. Understand? And don’t come out here. Not for any reason. I’m done. I’m glad I didn’t burn it, but it’s your burden now.”
I took the file and she turned back to the house, where the pack was waiting with pants and smiles. She stopped halfway.
“I know how I look, Detective. I know how I live. But I wasn’t always like this. Just be careful which path you follow. I didn’t think anything could ever scare me the way Alexa did that day. But I was wrong.”